Kunstwerke

Kunstwerke deals with various moral values of the 1960s, thereby transporting their content into the present. Raised among others are questions related to feminism, technicism, faith in progress, and poetics, all of which continue to exert their influence during the 21st century. The post-utopian, ironic gaze of the artists on the spectacularised world of commodities refers to positions adopted by the critical avant-gardes of the 1960s and 70s, while these are updated with an orientation toward the transformed historical context of a globalised world of commodities.

The project includes the video Kunstwerke 36, the photo series Die Kunst und das schöne Heim and the photo installation CasaBellaArt 1-6, each of which can be presented in different evironments and installations. In all these works a performerin (Tina Bara) presents contemporary household appliances and furnishings. The performance of the artist has the form of defamiliarized "directions for use" which employ aberrant presentational gestures. The action recalls Semiotics of the Kitchen, a 1975 video by American artist Martha Rosler. The feminist content of this work is regarded as an important reference. It Is not adopted directly, but instead handled as a precondition for the present. The appliances are investigated in terms of their forms and functions; their possible forms of use are reflected upon while at the same time they are voided of meaning and reinterpreted. Their designs are understood as expressions of the tumultuous decades of the 60s and 70s, with the "economic miracle" occurring in the West, and "really existing socialism" in the East.